in particular, on russia. i think if you put a gun to the head of a trump white house official, they cannot tell you right now what our policy is toward russia. what do you think about that, karen? you have thought about trying to write about trump and foreign policy. do you think he has one yet? karen: i think there are pieces of policy, but i am not sure they come together in terms of a strategy. i think they would like to get rid of some of what they call the sort of minor issues, the housekeeping issues, in terms of -- we took over their compound under the obama administration in this country, they won't let us build a new consulate in st. petersburg. russian security under obama was harassing u.s. diplomats -- they would like to get rid of all that stuff, so you have had lower level talks that have dealt with those issues. susan: that is not really policy. karen: but they feel like they need russia. i think they still believe, as trump said during the campaign, that it does not make sense to have bad rela

when he returns to washington, he will find russia is still dominating the news. on thursday, senate republicans released the newest version of the bill to repeal and replace the affordable care act. joining me now, megan murphy, the editor of "bloomberg businessweek." and from washington, mike allen, the cofounder of axios. and yoni appelbaum, the senior editor for politics at "the atlantic." it has been a heck of a week. i heard the president before he left for france was frustrated and lashing out over the fact the russia story will not go away. i have heard it suggested by some he saw this story involving his son as perhaps the worst development and worst day of his presidency. we have new developments. more new developments today. we have heard the president has hired a new criminal attorney, ty cobb. megan: they have been looking for someone to come in for some time now to be the enforcer on this probe, figure out how they will react in terms of rapid response, as well as making sure people adhere to a similar storyline going forward. you are right in the se

i don't believe this administration will be defined by russia. i think mr. mueller there's no evidence of collusion induced, but there may be wrongdoing by individuals. the administration will be defined by what it does or fails to do. right now, the ice is thin. when it breaks, it will be dramatic, unless they deliver. you get the fall and the first quarter of 2018, but after that, nothing happens. you don't want to go into the midterms with your party staying at home angry and the other party marching in the streets. that's a recipe for a wave. charlie: so trump will be defined between now and right before the midterm election? >> absence and extraordinary crisis abroad, yes. >> he's right. we spend a lot of time talking about the russian investigation. that dominates headlines. but i think when voters go to vote in 2018, i agree 100%. i think what will happen will be more reflective of whether they see anything in washington true to his promises. as an american, i'm really concerned, because he tapped into a great deal of anger in this country. legitimate

other than that, i have nothing to do with russia. jonathan: in 2008, donald trump, jr., told the real estate conference russians make up a disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets and he added we see a lot of money pouring in from russia. as craig unger reports in this month's edition of "the new republic," the money has been pouring in for the better part of three decades. as some of that money has come from questionable stories. i'm pleased to welcome him to the program. details, heavily researched story about trump's ties, business ties to russia, about the role russian money has played throughout his business career. >> absolutely. i think we see these blockbusters dropping almost every day now in the press. what i was trying to do is say they do not come out of the blue. this is part of the story that goes back to i found in 1984 when for the first time a guy named david met with donald trump. this was a fellow with ties to the russian mob. he goes in and buys five condos. the state attorney general later said that

rt and the most popular anchor in russia admits information is a weapon and they have aimed it at russia's in these. that means trying to destabilize the west through propaganda campaigns. the propaganda campaigns went far into the united states. president trump certainly echoes some of those propaganda points. >> information has been weaponize. cyber warfare has been weaponize. >> it is one in the same. the russians do not see it differently. early last year, there was a fake story about the so-called rape of a german/russian girl. it was fake great the russian media new that it was fake. the russian foreign minister new it was fate but used it as a tool against german chancellor angela merkel. you have a real notion all of this combined, whether diplomacy, information, you can use all of the tools at your disposal to try to weaken your enemy. >> there is economic suffering in russia. i wonder how the putin administration fends off any negative discussion of that. >> this is where you see a generational divide. this is what we are seeing in the last few months. a lot of people say the 90'

. >> i did not: with russia, nor do i know if anyone else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian businesses, and i have been fully transparent in providing all requested information. charlie: donald trump jr. and former campaign chairman paul manafort will also appear before the judiciary committee this week.joining me from washington, robert costa from the washington post and moderator of "washington week," on pbs, susan page of usa today, and hugh hewitt, of "the hugh and frank bruni of the new york times. tell me about the appearance today and what might have been this week with respect to the testimony. >> i think jared kushner did about as well as anyone could in a difficult situation, charlie. i read his entire 11 page letter over the air so that commuters could hear it. it was not denial. it was specific and details. it was explanatory. for those trying to give trump the benefit of the doubt, they would find it comforting.i found it interesting that he said he has never met sergei gore called for -- before. i also fo

one of the starkest illustrations's attitudes toward russia. the hostile to russia party, vladimir putin was a big bogeyman. donald trump gets elected and take republican voters have a much more favorable view of vladimir putin and people heading in the opposite direction. both sides do this, i am sorry but that is ever long answer to your question. i was much more struck by the latitude he has and clearly he made the joke about being able to shoot somebody in the street and people would give him, i don't think that is the case. within the realm of normal politics, i think you could get away with very much anything. alison: he is their guy. >> that is a more powerful thing. imagine you're a coal miner in west virginia. lots of democrats did not understand why people in coal mining towns in west virginia voted for a billionaire who showed up and said you guys will have your jobs back. democrats look at that and say the president can't do that, he doesn't get to command the world price of coal. coal comes from wyoming these days. they have a ton

charlie: did you approve russia coming in? -- made a point that they were invited in by the assad government. were you ok with russia coming in to prop up the assad government? mr. javad sharif: what we have said is that we do not interfere in the decision by a sovereign government. i give you a clearer example. we disagree with the united states, but we do not intervene against the united states cooperating with the iraqi government. we have not intervened against it. because we believe that is a decision that the iraqi government should make. we may oppose it, but it is their decision. charlie: so do you encourage the government of iraq? to make sure that members of the sunni islam, are not shut out from government? so that they do not see what we have seen time after time, first al qaeda, then isis, come out of people who felt like they were excluded. javad zarif: we believe that the iraqi government should be inclusive. charlie: and you encourage the iraqi government to do that. mr. javad sharif: absolutely. charlie: the m

who is going to be there and defend you against a potential threat from a country like russia. alison: correspondent shannon pettypiece reporting from washington for bloomberg news, thank you so much. shannon: thank you. ♪ ♪ alison: donald trump's victory in the 2016 election took some of the nation by surprise. his support has remained largely unwavering despite the issues that have so far plagued his administration. a new special report in "the economist" examines what led to the president's rise and why politics may be forever changed. he is the u.s. editor and also the report's lead author and spent several weeks in states across the country to better understand the mentality of the president's steadfast backing. i am pleased to welcome him to the program. john. what prompted this? >> i was interested in looking at the trump phenomenon from the ground up. it really feels like in 20, 30, 40 years time, people will be saying about the trump presidency, how did that happen? there is one way to answer that which is to look at the campaign, the tweets, what is happening in t

they want to see sanctions on russia. they voted for that. this is the risk for president trump that he is so far apart from his own party on this issue, he risks having the weakest policy toward russia of any president in 70 years, and that's a dangerous point for him politically. jeff: so much of the talk has been on the meeting with putin, but there are other important parts of this summit. including the relationship with germany. that relationship with angela merkel has been uneven at best so far. what do you think the u.s. might and do youon that, think the president is interested in working on that? nicholas: i hope he is. the united states is not in a good position with our nato allies. president trump has been very ambivalent about nato. he's been quite critical of the european union. he tends to talk about germany more as an economic competitor, our trade balance, then as a nato ally -- than as a nato ally. combined with his decision on climate change, to withdraw the u.s. from the paris agreement, u.s. relations with europe are at a

that's the way you figure out policy in russia. from their perspective, hillary was going to win because the establishment was going to figure out a way to ensure their people would win. i think the russians were probably more surprised than the americans that trump actually won. i absolutely believe that. but it's hard for me to imagine -- charlie: but you have no doubt that they hacked and attempted to influence the election one way or the other. ian: no doubt whatsoever. charlie: but where you can't go yet is a collusion between the president of russia and his government and his intelligence operatives, and members of the trump team providing them something which would have clearly been beyond the pale. ian: and that they would have gotten something in return, some commitment of meaningful offers. charlie: or they wanted to do it because they thought they had some leverage on the president, and if he was elected, they would have an advantage. ian: but it clearly seems there were many people around trump, some quite high-level, t

charlie: between my election campaign and russia's. john: when he says is nothing but the independent counsel, the special counsel, bob mueller, obviously thinks trump has a long history of intertwinement with russia and he thinks that is relevant as to the issue of collusion. charlie: that someone rescued him and gave him funds. mark: no one in america wants a special counsel appointed to investigate this. bill clinton felt similarly but this special counsel has things about him that are distinctive. number one, he's extremely competent. number two, he is beyond reproach in the view of republicans and democrats alike, and number three, he has hired quickly and is moving fast. sometimes moving fast is a good thing for someone because they don't want a long investigation but this guy moving fast i don't think is in the president's interests because he's in the beginning of his presidency and the whole thing, right now, to some extent has overtaken anything else and could quickly bring it down. john: and before he is a man behaving as of

is a new twist in a month-long investigation into possible collusion between the trump campaign and russia. said these aoregon mill show there is no longer a question of whether this campaign sockesought to collude with a foreign power. joining me from washington is shannon, a correspondent for bloomberg news and ed o'keefe. he is a congressional reporter for "the washington post," and a contributor to cbs news. welcome to both of you. donald trump junior said he released these emails so he could be totally transparent, but it was only because the emails were about to be released by a newspaper. >> that is right. the "new york times" got these and he rushed them out. we appreciate the transparency in putting it out there, but it demonstrates the clearest links yet between officials in the russian government trying to talk to the trump campaign about potentially damaging information about hillary clinton. in the words of mark warner, all of the denials over the past year or so from trump and his sons, that there was no attempt to talk to rush about any of this are now cast aside by the proo

>> seeking concessions from russia? what they would want to do, what they have talked about doing, is establishing a channel where they could potentially cooperate to reach some sort of settlement or resolution to the situation. of a has been talking special envoy for ukraine, potentially getting the united states, ukraine, and russia at the table to talk about potential solutions to de-escalate the situation, of course. whether or not they can make advances on syria, there's idea of a peace agreement in the way that john kerry was talking about last year. whether they can take the temperature down a bit and do a better job of cooperating in the efforts against the islamic state, that's an open question that they would want to ask for. the question for the united states and president trump is whether he would want to or seek to ease to lift the sanctions that are on russia as a result of what's happening in the ukrainian elections. congress has weighed in pretty on legislationg a couple of weeks ago to codify those sanc

shannon: that week will be crucial because this russia-cyber threat is real. not just interfering in our elections, but hacking other aspects of the american infrastructure. hacks of the electric grid. if there is a threat from russia after the invasion of crimea and further expansion that the russians may have. it is crucial, too, as relations go with nato and other european leaders. at the g7 meeting, the president's last international trip, they were tense moments between germany, france, and nato members. chance to rebuild some of those relationships and encourage nato in europe that you have a strong ally in the u.s. who will be there and defend you against a potential threat from a country like russia. alison: correspondent shannon pettypiece reporting from washington for bloomberg news, thank you so much. shannon: thank you. ♪ ♪ alison: donald trump's victory in the 2016 election took some of the nation by surprise. his support from palm beach to kansas has remained largely unwavering despite the issues that have so far plagued his administration. a

he gets to escape the headlines of the russia investigation. he does get to establish a personal relationship with some of these leaders, which is something he is comfortable with. he is very transactional. a relationship with a foreign leader can be transactional. that might be an area where he is more comfortable, as opposed to dealing with congress where you have hundreds of people you are trying to get on the same page. >> it is really all about these bilateral discussions with him, right? >> shannon is right. foreign policy is often where presidents who are embattled turn to because they have greater latitude. as she said, you do have to worry but every member of congress and their views on it. you are the president of the united states dealing with another head of state. that creates a different dynamic. we know one thing about president trump. he likes to deal one-on-one with people. he likes to get to know them. he likes to take a measure of them. he feels he knows how to get the upper hand on adversaries or any kind of relationship lik

at that moment i think trump , awoke to the danger that the russia probe posed to him. he sent bannon back from saudi arabia to try to stand up some kind of outside legal war room to fight harder. charlie: is he in control of that? josh: i don't think he is. he knew that the lawyer from the campaign, when they were fighting off these accusations from women who said that trump had groped them. bannon and the lawyer knew each other well. charlie: this is what is interesting to me. the person trump seems to admire the most is james mattis. general mattis. he has given him the most power. he can make decisions on the battlefield and getting praise from military strategists. it may say something about his admiration for people that he thinks are tough -- josh: i would go a step further and say, veneration. especially for military generals. one thing you noticed in the campaign is whenever trump was in trouble, he would surround himself with generals. when he was finally forced to apologize for the birther slander, do you remember what he did? he calls the very strange press

and it's also the case that depending on how you define things outside the scope of russia and again there's some question about the things that trump says, well, if he starts finances, that's outside of -- i think he defines the russia thing is what calendar year16, 2016. it's clear right now. charlie: between my election russia's.nd john: when he says is nothing council, --pendent muller,ial counsel, bob obviously thinks trump has a intertwinement with russia and he thinks that ofrelevant as to the issue collusion. someone rescued him and gave him funds. mark: no one in america wants a counsel appointed to investigate this. similarly butelt this special counsel has things about him that are distinctive. one, he's extremely competent. number two, he is beyond ofroach in the view republicans and democrats alike, and number three, he has hired is moving fast. sometimes moving fast is a good thing for someone because they don't want a long investigation this guy moving fast i don't think is in the president's interests because he's in the presidency ands the whole thing, right now, to

witchhunte cries of and all of the talk of russia trying to assist the president's andaign was a witchhunt there was nothing there, just a cockamamie scheme, this shows that they actually knew that the russian government was interested in trying to help the trump campaign. host: the president says that he has nothing to do with this. >> that is right. he praised the transparency of his child and said that he ,efers people to his counsel his criminal defense that he has hired. that donaldsaid trump was not aware of this, even though it took place just one floor below his office and that paul manafort and jared kushner, a senior advisor at the white house, was involved. he may not have been directly involved, but there are lots of questions as to whether any of the three ever mentioned that they met with this woman. if that is the extent of it, fine. if there is evidence that he was encouraging it or was contacted are going into serious and new territory. host: what have we learned about her and what she is doing? questionss a lot of about the information she had and what she was doing there

he can't hear the rules that recused him from the russia administration would have to reduce himself from anything with -- recuse himself with anything from hillary clinton because of the campaign. he said i don't want my attorney general to go after hillary clinton. it is not a priority. during the campaign he said, whatever we would do with hillary clinton, it would be a to my attorney general. a lot of mixed messages. every day, the president attacking sessions, anthony scaramucci saying, suggesting the president doesn't want sessions to keep the job. there is no substantive argument here in terms of the key parts of the trump agenda, whether immigration or cracking down on crime. those critiques are not being leveled at jeff sessions. it is the russia investigation or what he hasn't done in investigating hillary clinton or the side issues. it is worth remembering there is no more loyal member of the cabinet if you measure who is out there loud and proud for donald trump when there was political risk. charlie: and first. john: and first, and at a crucial time when ted cruz was cha

do you see the tone improving , whether it is europe and russia or the u.s. and russia either way? ,david: no, basically because , there are too many divided interests. --sia is interesting interested in dividing europe further. the european interest is in finding ways to stand up. there are members of the european union equally threatened by what they see as an aggressive russia. i think tone matters. but substance matters more. i think we are at a dangerous period, because the global system has been built over the had an american anger, but it also had other multilateral institutions like the european union. if you pull up the anchor, the boat starts rocking. that is the danger. it creates space. when the american anchor in the global system isn't there, when ,"ere is "unpredictability someone in the administration wants to make unpredictability if you are a small country is a , good thing to have up your sleeve. if you are the world's anchor, predictability is very important because you are the benchmark against what everyone else establishes their behavior. especially with the

there are members of the european union equally threatened by what they see as aggressive russia. i think tone matters. but substance matters more. i think we are at a dangerous time because the global system has been built over the last sunday five years and had an american anchor. it also had other multilateral institutions like the european union. if you pull up the anchor, the boat starts rocking. that is the danger. it creates space. when the american anchor in the global space is not there, when there is unpredictability, if you are a small country is a good thing to have up your sleeve. if you are the world's anchor, credibility is very important because you are the benchmark against what everyone else establishes their behavior. especially with the russians, you do not want them testing you out. you want them to know in advance what your own positions are. some of the difficulties of the previous administration were around the. i think it is important the russians do know europe is not going to put up with interference and is going to maintain its position on ukraine. that

the pressure is on to make it big in china. >> the senate approving sanctions on russia. the bill also prevents president trump from

if he starts moving to do business dealings in connection to russia. so you can imagine a situation where the family members would have quite an incentive to stop the investigation before it uncovers things that cause a potential problem. charlie: the shifting factions in the white house, it is really hard, because they are not united on issues that are necessarily consistent. for example, bannon was said to be opposed to the hiring of the new communications chief. according to the reports i read. whereas, others you would think would not have an opinion, were in favor of it. jonathan: that's true. i mean, one of the key dynamics at the moment is that steve bannon and reince priebus have become allies of convenience in a feud against jared kushner and ivanka trump. that is probably in terms of the hottest conflicts in the white house, that is probably right at the top. and jared and ivanka distrust reince priebus, they think he is incompetent, and they want him out of the job. to the extent which steve bannon sees them as ideological enemies, he wants

john dowd will be the lead attorney on the team dealing with special prosecutor robert mueller's russia investigation. dowd is denying reports the president wants to highlight potential conflict of interest on the special counsel's team. iran's deputy foreign minister a

charlie: what is going to change because whatever the president and the president of russia agreed on in respect to syria? you are smiling, i think. >> i don't think they knew. we heard about de-escalation zones. it's not quite clear what that means. there is a serious question as to the extent to which iran and the assad forces are trying to establish some kind of corridor that would connect with the shiite elements in iraq and then onto iran. and part of that corridor, it would potentially go to the de-escalation zone. it says nothing about governance in syria, nothing about stability or what happens to people. it's one of the areas of rhetoric where at the end of it, you know almost less hearing the words than you did before the announcement. charlie: david? with tony, there is uncertainty about what this means. the watchword for this whole campaign is -- the u.s. has decided the limits of what it can do, the leverage, the ability to shape the future. there is a kind of ad hoc improvised quality. that is the case with the u.s.-russian cooperation. three weeks ago, when the syrian f

his attorney general, which can be traced back to jeff sessions' decision to refuse himself from the russia investigation. ever since then, the president has been furious behind the scenes because he believes sessions recusal has left him personally and his administration vulnerable to attack from democrats, obama to the special counsel now being run by bob mueller. and it has created a suffocating cloud around the white house where the rest of the agenda seems to get stalled, and he traces a lot of this back to sessions who he thought could be his manager justice department. charlie: some are saying it was the firing of james comey that led to the appointment of bob mueller. and if he had not listened to the people urging him to fire comey, he would not have had the special prosecutor put in place by the deputy attorney general. >> that is exactly right. there is a lot of swirling factors that have led the president to this point. it is not just sessions recusing himself. it is the decision by the president to have a private conversation with the former f.b.i. director that prompted the sp